Beech Creek Gardens is a pocket of nature on the outskirts of Alliance, bordered by a highway, farms and houses. Trails loop through the 175 wooded acres. There are greenhouses and a building where visitors can commune with butterflies.

Just don't expect high-speed Internet service.

More than 98 percent of Stark County's 151,000 households have access to land-based broadband Internet, but the nature preserve and its neighbors on Beech Street NE sit in a dead spot, according to the latest data from Connect Ohio, a not-for-profit group that tracks web access.

That means being forced to use a slow, satellite-based service.

"If we have more than three people online at once, it actually slows everyone down," said associate director Melinda Carmichael. "A fourth or fifth person might bump them completely off."

DOLLARS AND DEMAND

Land-based broadband gaps tend to occur along the county's more rural southern edge, but pockets pop up even inside Canton's city limits.

A seven-home block in the Georgeview Estates development on the city's northeast edge, is one such dead spot, according to Connect Ohio's mapping.

Resident Wardell Davis said a neighbor three houses to the north has high-speed service, but the line doesn't reach his home on Marietta Avenue NE.

Davis said that leaves him with Internet service that is "crappy as hell."

Whether broadband comes down your street is a question of cost, population density and demand.

"If you're a telecom company and you have dollars to invest, you're going to invest those dollars where the highest return is," said Stu Johnson, Connect Ohio's executive director.

Say a company has the choice of building a mile of cable to a campus with 600 data-hungry students, or running a line down a country road with six farms, half of which might not hook up, Johnson said. It's not hard to see which project will be built.

"It's as simple as it is sad," he said. " ... I bet those same households can't get pizza delivery. But pizza isn't critical to your economy, your livelihood, your child's education and the like."

CASE STUDY

Beech Creek Gardens occupies a former house less than a quarter mile from the road. When the not-for-profit organization took over the property it tried to get service from Time Warner Cable.

"They told us no after they sent a technician because it was too many feet," Carmichael said. "It wouldn't warrant the cost."

DSL service wasn't available, either, so the preserve pays $60 a month for a satellite service.

Carmichael said she spends two to three hours a day communicating online with people, and some work she can only do from home, where she has a faster connection.

Page 2 of 2 - "We are not satisfied but it's the only option," she said.

IMPROVING ACCESS

Statewide, 97.7 percent of households are served by land-based, non-mobile broadband with at least 3Mbps download and 768 Kbps upload speeds.

"We're never going to be at 100 percent, but we can do better," Johnson said.

Stark County is above that average, but neighboring rural counties lag behind. In Tuscarawas County, 87 percent have access. The rate drops to 76 percent in Carroll County, but is starting to change as gas and oil companies come in to drill the Utica Shale, Johnson said.

As it finds under-served areas, Connect Ohio tries to work with communities to make them more attractive to providers, by leveraging community-owned assets or holding township-wide meetings.

Increasing access is important for education and employment. High school graduation rates are 8 percent higher when broadband is in the home, Johnson said. Ohioans also need the Internet to reach the state jobs website, and after Dec. 31, to take the GED.